by Lionel White
She hadn’t tried to follow him into the car, but stood on the sidewalk, yelling at the top of her lungs. By now a woman, a large, bare-headed colored woman wearing what looked like a butcher’s apron, had approached the girl and was trying to quiet her down and Sid looked past them just in time to see one of the men who had come out of the bar take a jackknife out of his pocket and snap open the blade.
He still didn’t understand it, didn’t know what had happened or why. But he knew one thing. He knew that it would be pointless to hang around and try to find out. He knew that they must get out of there as fast as they could.
He was yelling at the others to get in the car as he turned on the ignition switch.
The boys were lucky, aside from two of them suffering minor cuts from broken glass when a rock went through the side window, they managed to make their escape.
A police officer in a cruising squad car, who stopped by some five minutes later when he saw the crowd collected in front of the Tip Toe Beer Parlor, made the mistake of getting out and telling
them to break it up. He wasn’t so lucky. He had his gun and handcuffs taken away from him and he was badly stomped and beaten. The only thing that saved him was that someone tossed a firebomb into the grocery store down the street while he was still being mauled and the crowd surged over to see what the new excitement was. It gave him a chance to crawl back into the squad car and drive away. His escape, however, was short-lived. He was shot and killed by a sniper an hour and a half later as he was leaving the emergency entrance of the Oakdale General Hospital.
4 HOLDING his right arm up to shield his eyes from the heat, Boyd Millard started to cross Division Street to make his way over to the big red American De France Pumper from Fire Company 3, where Chief Chet Miller stood bawling through the bullhorn as he directed a group of firefighters who had trained the hose on the flames which were pouring from the four-story tenement house next to the liquor store.
He had to climb over a mazelike tangle of canvas hose and carefully skirt piles of smoldering rubbish which were scattered from curbstone to curbstone. The linen handkerchief he held in his hand was black with soot but he used it anyway to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Somewhere along the way he had lost his hat and his mane of white hair, also black from the soot drifting into the street from the burning buildings, hung down over his eyes half-blinding him.
His breath was coming in short gasps and he knew that he would have to find a place to sit down and rest for a moment before he collapsed. But there was no place and he had no time in any case. Pushing his way through the crowd around the fire chief, he couldn't find breath to speak for a moment so he grasped Miller by the arm. The fire chief swore and abruptly turned, brushing him off, and as Millard fell back, the chief recognized him and quickly reached for his arm to steady him.
“Sorry, Mayor,” he started to say, but Millard shook the hair out of his eyes and interrupted him.
“Goddamn it, Chet,” he said, “you got to do something. This * whole damned town will be in flames if you don’t get some more
equipment in here. Why don’tyou ..
“Equipment?” Miller said, looking at him blankly for a moment as though he didn’t quite understand the word. “Equipment? Why we got every piece available here right now."
“There are people in those buildings,” Millard said. “People. Men, women, children. We have to get them out. These can’t be all the fire engines in Oakdale. Where...”
“This isn’t the only fire in Oakdale,” Chief Miller said. “The powerhouse is on fire. There’s a blaze in a supermarket out on Peach Street. I just had word a couple of minutes ago over the police radio that the main hanger out at the airport is on fire and I haven’t even got a single engine to send out there. For Christ sake..
“I don’t give a damn about the airport or the powerhouse,” Millard said. “This is where the problem is. This is where people are being burned alive. Right here, within a couple of blocks of the main business district of the city. If you don’t have any more equipment, how about the county? How about nearby towns?”
“I’m doing what I can,” Miller said. “I tried a half hour ago to call Millville and Bern, but the phones are out. I have sent a couple of men out in cars and the police are trying to do what they can with their radios. We’ll get help, but it may be some time.”
“Time?” Millard said. “We don't have any time." His eyes went across the street as the sound of a wall crashing into a building reached his ears. He had to yell to make himself heard above general confusion of sound.
“There must be dozens of people in that building. Do you think you can save ..
Miller shook his head.
“No. I’m going to pull the engines out of here now while we can still move them and before they burn. We can’t save any of this.”
His hand waved helplessly at the burning buildings which lined the east side of Division Street. “The best we can do is try to contain it until help arrives. This isn’t just a fire, it’s a disaster.
People are beginning to panic. I think you’d better get the Governor. Have the National Guard ...”
“There was no way of reaching the Capitol,” Millard said. “I’ve already tried. We have a man, a flyer, going out to the airport now, and he will fly in. But even assuming he is able to take off and makes it and we reach the Governor, it will be at least a good twenty-four hours before any substantial help can arrive. We are going to have to lick this one ourselves. If we can round up some more men ...’’
“I’m having trouble keeping the men I have on the job," Miller said. “Two of my boys have already been hit by sniper bullets. Why the hell the Goddamned police can’t protect...”
“The police have their hands full,” Millard said. “I’ve had reports of a couple of small riots already and looting is beginning to break out. My God, I never thought I’d see the day when Oakdale ...”
Again he was interrupted as a woman’s high-pitched scream pierced the night air and both men turned and looked up. There was the silhouette of a woman’s body standing on the fourth-floor windowsill of the burning tenement across the street and for a split second the murmuring of the crowd below ceased and there was only the spitting, cracking sounds of the flames as they ate through the flimsy structure of the burning buildings. And then again the woman uttered one long, agonized scream and she leaned forward and pitched head down into the street.
A low moan like the cry of some mortally wounded animal escaped from the crowd.
Chief Miller lifted the bullhorn to his mouth and began shouting orders and a helmeted fireman climbed behind the wheel of the pumper and gunned the engine, simultaneously pressing the siren button as he prepared to back off and turn the vehicle.
Mayor Millard slowly moved off, going toward Green Street where he had left his car.
He still couldn’t quite believe it. Still couldn’t accept it. Couldn’t agree with young Carlton Asmore. They had a disaster on their hands, there was no doubt about that. Incidents certainly were taking place. There probably had been some arson and looting
and Chief Miller had said there was sniping. But a full-fledged riot or race war? No, he just couldn’t accept that.
Of course, after that bombing at the church, it was only natural that there would be trouble. A few hotheads and fanatics would blow their tops and go berserk. Indeed, they already had. But aside from the fires, which did present a very definite threat, the Mayor refused to believe that things would get out of control. The thing was to remain calm and do what had to be done. Of course, communications being cut off when the phone services went out made it tough, but he wasn’t licked yet. He knew that the radio station had a standby generator and the thing to do was get on the air and try to calm people down. Declare a curfew and keep people off the streets. Avoid any further escalation of panic and fear. The bombing of the church and the killing of those people was a tragedy, but it was obviously the work of a maniac. It was going to be h
ard to live with, but if people would just keep their cool, he, he and the chief of police and the prosecutor would go to work and find the perpetrators of the crime and they would be punished. The decent white people of Oakdale, and God knows ninety-nine and nine-tenths of the white people were decent, were not responsible for the crime and even the colored people should realize that. The thing was to reach them, and to let them know that he, their mayor, was just as shocked and horrified and indignant as they were, and that he would act.
He wanted the National Guard now himself, but not because of any fear of a widespread riot. He wanted them because of the fires and the need to keep control with an understaffed police and fire department. No, Carlton Asmore was still wrong. The arson and the looting and the few small riot incidents were solely the result of that church bombing and certainly Asmore could not have predicted that. Oakdale’s colored people would be shook up and indignant and a few of them would lose their heads and go off half-cocked, but in the long run they would be all right. Oakdale would not become another Newark or Washington or Detroit. Oakdale’s police would cope with the problem. The thing to do was get on the air and declare a curfew and get the people off the streets. Keep them in their houses and put an end to the looting and
arson. After all, no one actually could really say it had been arson at this point. Of course, the coincidence of the fires both in the colored section and at the power plant and at the airport...
His right foot suddenly jammed down on the brake pedal and the heavy car lurched and swerved violently as he pulled hard on the steering wheel. In that flashing second as the heavy machine careened wildly across the street, the headlights outlined the figures of the two children which had caught his eye as they stood frozen in the middle of the street directly in front of his headlights in that fraction of an instant before he jammed on the brake. His mind had been elsewhere and he hadn’t seen them at all until he was within a few feet of them. Even as he fought to control the car, not even sure whether he had missed them or not, he had seen that they were carrying a large television set between them and that the set itself probably weighed as much as they did together. They couldn’t have been more than ten years old. His reaction on seeing them there directly in his path had been automatic. Without thinking about it at all he had known that they had looted the set from some appliance store which had been broken into.
The heavy sedan, completely out of control, climbed the curb and sideswiped a telephone pole and then turned end to end and slowly rolled over on its side.
It was strange, but for the next moment or so, as he lay crunched down on the floor under the steering wheel, the only thing he could think of was to wonder how it had been possible for two small colored boys to lift and carry away a television set which it would probably have taken a couple of full-grown men to lift.
He was only half-conscious, feeling nothing at all, the pain signals not yet having registered through his nervous system and he might almost have fallen asleep had it not been for the sound of the fully running engine reaching his ears. He began to wonder how it was the engine could be running and he was no longer behind the wheel of the car when he became conscious of the smell of something burning. It brought him fully to and he suddenly realized where he was and what had happened. Vaguely he wondered why there were no sounds aside from the purring engine of the Cadillac and why no one had come to his assistance. He moved slightly and a terrifying pain shot through his shoulder and down his left arm.
He struggled then, twisted and half-turning and clawing to pull himself upright. The smell of something burning was stronger and he lifted his right arm and his fingers found the ignition switch over his head and he turned it instinctively and the engine died. The smell of burning was stronger and for a moment he remembered the accident, remembered jamming down on the brake pedal and he thought it must be the brake linings. And then suddenly he knew exactly where he was and what had happened and realized that the car must be on fire.
He suppressed the desire to cry out and, although now when he again moved the pain in his arm was so intense that he almost fainted, he pulled himself half upright and his right hand found the latch of the car’s door. It took all his strength to push the door open. A minute later and he was standing beside the overturned car. He saw a small flame lick out from the twisted hood and he quickly turned and started up the street. There was still the sharp pain in his left shoulder and down his arm, but he didn’t believe that he was seriously hurt.
For two or three minutes he just walked blindly, wanting to get away from the burning car. But then he slowed and finally stopped, trying to orient himself. He knew that he had been driving out to the radio station and he must be on State Street. The station would be some twenty blocks to the south and, shaken up as he was, the thought of twenty blocks staggered him. It was then that he thought of the hospital. Oakdale General Hospital was at State and South Charter Streets, two blocks away.
5 MORE than shock, horror and utter fury, Carlton Asmore was experiencing a feeling of deep personal guilt as he stood helplessly in front of the shattered facade of the church and watched as the police officers placed the twisted body of the child on the stretcher and lifted it into the back of the ambulance.
Frozen in helplessness, he had stood there as though made of cement and he had watched them take the other small bodies from the twisted rubble of what had once been the first Abyssinian Baptist Church. And now the flames had taken over and he knew that whoever else remained buried in the debris of the bombed building were beyond any human aid. The enormity of the disaster had physically paralyzed him, but unfortunately it had only intensified his intellectual and emotional responses.
Although his intelligence told him that there had been no possible way he might have predicted and perhaps prevented the tragedy, he was still unable to avoid the feeling of personal guilt, the terrible sense of responsibility.
It is true that he had listened to Caroline and taken her seriously. Taken seriously also the stories that had been told him by the colored girl she had brought into his office to talk with him. Yes, he had believed them when they had warned him that there would be trouble, that a confrontation between the black people and the white people of Oakdale was in the making. Believed them despite the fact they had had no real concrete evidence to offer. Why, less than an hour ago he himself had vainly attempted to convey the warning to Mayor Millard, had tried to see that preparations were made and that something was done before the fuse was lighted and the powder keg exploded. He had listened and he had analyzed the situation from his understanding of the forces involved. He had believed, but actually what had he really done? He had merely attempted to reconvey the warning to a man who, his intelligence should have told him, would dismiss the whole matter as so much poppycock.
It didn’t really matter, however. Even had Millard taken him seriously, it would have been too late. Anything which he himself, Carlton Asmore, the district attorney of Oakdale, might have done as a preventive measure, should have been done long before this. His trouble had been that in the very beginning, when Caroline had first come to him with her rumors and her fears, he himself had been like the Mayor, skeptical and smug in the mistaken belief that he knew the city and the people of the city and that nothing really serious could ever happen to disturb the relationships between the blacks and the whites of the town which he and all the others in power had for so long taken for granted.
But now it had happened.
He didn’t have to look at the blackened, smoldering shell of the bombed-out church, didn't have to listen to the agonized cries coming from the dozens of colored women who crowded around him at the curbstone where he stood, didn’t have to hear the angry mutterings which had slowly begun to replace the horrified silence which had at first immobilized the crowd which had gathered. He knew that this was the spark, the thing which he had been waiting for, the signal which would set off the terror which he was positive would follow.
Ye
s, he should have acted, acted a long time ago. He knew in his heart that he couldn’t have prevented this particular tragedy. He realized that there was no way he could have foreseen or stopped whatever insane mentality had directed the hand which had been responsible for the murder of the children inside the church. But he could have done something which might perhaps have controlled the aftermath which he was sure would follow.
He had warned Millard, too late of course, that it would only take one incident. And now the incident had taken place. But the warning itself had come too late.
As though he were in a trance, he moved off, going back in the direction of the Cosmos Club. He knew that he must reach his car and must start doing something, take some positive action.
The trouble was he still wasn’t able quite to digest it, couldn’t clear his mind so that he would be capable of thinking straight. He realized that he was in a state of mild shock, but he knew that he must start doing something. It was strange, but now that the time to act had arrived, all he could think about were the things he might have done—had he only believed her earlier, taken Caroline seriously, when she had first started to talk to him and warn him.
Oh, in a way he had taken her seriously enough, right from the very beginning. But not in a meaningful way, a way that counted.
Slowly walking over toward State Street, unaware of the screaming of fire sirens and the crowds rushing past him, his mind went back to that afternoon some five months ago when he had first met Caroline Vargle. Caroline Vargle, whom, he had lately been humiliated and embarrassed to remember, he had described to his uncle, the day following the first meeting, as a “charming little bit of Yankee fluff in a miniskirt who would probably be marvelous in bed if I can only convince her I am interested in uplifting the masses."
